The FBI urged consumers to protect themselves by avoiding oversharing on social media. — Pixabay
WASHINGTON DC: The FBI is alerting the public to a surge in cybercriminals posing as financial institutions in order to seize control of bank, payroll and health-related accounts, part of what investigators described as a sharp rise in account takeover fraud. Since January 2025, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center has received more than 5,100 reports, representing losses that now exceed US$262mil (RM1bil).
FBI officials said criminals carry out the schemes by pretending to be bank employees or by creating websites that closely resemble legitimate financial institutions, tricking people into handing over sensitive login information. The goal of these criminals is to gain full access to a person’s online account and drain funds before the activity is detected, according to investigators.
According to the alert, many people are targeted through social-engineering tactics, including fraudulent calls, emails or text messages, in which scammers claim there are suspicious transactions linked to the victim’s account. In some cases, officials said, impostors escalate the trick by connecting the person with a second scammer posing as law enforcement.
The FBI said other cybercriminals rely on sophisticated phishing websites designed to mimic real banking or payroll portals. Some scammers go as far as using search-engine advertising to elevate their fake sites, a tactic known as SEO poisoning, causing users to unknowingly click on fraudulent links that capture their credentials.
Once criminals gain entry into an account, authorities said they move quickly to funnel money into accounts controlled by fraud networks, many of which are tied to cryptocurrency wallets. People are then often locked out through password resets, leaving them unable to stop transfers that are in progress.
The FBI urged consumers to protect themselves by avoiding oversharing on social media, monitoring their financial accounts, using strong and special passwords, enabling multi-factor authentication and navigating to login pages through bookmarks instead of search results.
Anyone affected by an account takeover incident should immediately contact their financial institution to request transaction recalls. – cleveland.com/Tribune News Service
